My tailor is rich
by tazey
Summary: A response to two scifi bboard challenges yet not quite suitable for the bboard...
1. Part 1

Well, this is an attempt to answer both Aeryncrichton's 'bedroom challenge' and UCSBDad/Shipscat's 'Aeryn in a short white skirt' challenge, posted on the schifi board quite a while ago. I'm a very slow writer… (  
  
It turned out to be just a trifle 'too much' for the scifi board, so I'm posting it here for the sake of the young ones.  
  
Disclaimers: yadda, yadda, yadda. Nobody would want this anyway.  
  
Grateful thanks to Aeryncrichton and Atana_Mirtai for the betareading.  
  
Timeline: so many cycles after Fractures it hurts just to think about it. (  
  
  
  
************  
  
"Why does it have to be white?" Aeryn sulked before the full-length mirror. "White is such a frelling stupid no-color!"  
  
"And black is just soooo colorful…" John quipped from his sprawled position on the bed, one hand propped against the side of his head so he could let his gaze roam freely over her shapely form. He answered her glare with a sweet smile and rolled on the bed to drop his feet on the ground. He approached her and wrapped his arms around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder. "Interon customs, love," he murmured soothingly, "Bride wears green, groom wears red, bride's guests are only allowed white, groom's guests only black."  
  
"I know that already," she retorted with an irritated sigh, "but we know the groom, we could wear black."  
  
"Hum, technically yes but officially, we are Jool's guests. So white it is." He looked at their reflections in the mirror. "And it doesn't look so bad," he let his eyes wander over the image and smiled appreciatively, "not bad at all actually."  
  
For people whose everyday clothes seemed to come from SM sexshops, the Interons had a surprisingly comfortable approach to ceremonial clothing, though, as far as he was concerned, his pants did seem a little tight around the hips and buttocks. He could feel the thin fabric stretch with his every move. Chiana, who had saved them the trouble of shopping for the right clothes, must have thought he was leaner than he actually was or… John chuckled lightly against Aeryn's ear, realizing there was no way Chiana would mistake any man's size.  
  
"What?!" Aeryn asked testily.  
  
"Nothing," John mumbled with an amused headshake. He met her gaze in the mirror and smiled softly, enjoying the feel of her firm body beneath her loose fitting dress, the thin yet totally opaque fabric their clothes were both made of letting their body heat radiate between them. "I like you in white," he murmured tenderly.  
  
He brought his hands on her bare shoulders, rubbing his thumbs in slow circles from the thin straps of her dress to the sensitive nerve endings in her neck, whose strong yet delicate line was beautifully revealed by her hair piled high on her head in cascading curls. Her dress had a high waistline, starting right beneath her breasts and providing a most interesting cleavage especially from his present point of view, then it simply fell loosely all the way to the floor, Aeryn's bare feet hardly visible below the hem. She had deemed the white feminine shoes to be 'frellling uncomfortable' and had kicked them aside two microts after trying them on. The shoes had gone flying over to a corner of their assigned bedroom in the huge building where the wedding ceremony and subsequent party would be held. For a fleeting moment as he stood behind her, his body largely hidden by her form except for his face, he let himself pretend that this was 'their' special day and that he was wearing a black tuxedo instead of a loose fitting short white shirt and white pants. Yet he no longer felt that painful pang when thinking of their wedding. Their present lives held all the aspects of marriage except for the ceremony itself, he could wait patiently until she herself was willing to make things official.  
  
He let his hands fall down her sides, revealing her slender form in the mirror as the thin fabric momentarily clung to her body under the light caress of his hands. She leaned against his chest, her gaze locked on his in the mirror, her hands clasping his over her waist.  
  
"You look abso-frelling-lutely gorgeous," he whispered in her ear.  
  
"Hmm…" she replied dubiously.  
  
He turned her around in his arms and they moved slightly to accommodate their bodies to their new positions, always looking for the maximum contact surface. "Since when do you care so much about your appearance?" He asked, his head cocked at her, his tone slightly teasing. "You're the only woman I know who when she says it's only gonna take her five minutes to dress actually tells the truth."  
  
Aeryn shifted a bit uneasily in his arms. "I don't really care," she replied with what John felt lacked some convincing strength, "It's just that I prefer wearing black. I'm used to it and I like it." She bit her lip before his still questioning expression and visibly relaxed when he seemed to drop the subject with a light kiss on her lips. She moved away from him and they both froze on the spot as they heard an eerie loud rending tear echo in the room's silence.  
  
"Frell!" They breathed out in unison as they spotted the damage to her dress. The fabric had split all the way from the hem up to the back of her knee in a slanted angle.  
  
"Frell John!" Aeryn exclaimed irritatedly. "Couldn't you be more careful?"  
  
"Me?!!" He cried out in shocked surprise. "Why me? I didn't do anything!"  
  
"Oh…? And what does that look like?" She snapped sarcastically, her finger pointing down to the lowest part of the tear.  
  
John dropped his gaze toward the indicated spot and, squinting his eyes, slowly made out the incomplete contours of a shoe print on the otherwise pristine fabric. He swallowed hard and braced himself to meet her gaze again. "An unfortunate accident?" He ventured with his most apologetic smile.  
  
Aeryn just sighed in irritation and looked at the tear again. "I know I didn't much like it before but it looks even worse now," she grumbled.  
  
"Let's call Chiana," John offered sensibly. "I'm sure she'll be able to find a way to fix this tear or… find you another outfit perhaps." He walked briskly to the nearby table and picked up the mobile communications' device. He quickly punched in the number for Jool's room where he expected to find Chiana, since she was shepherding Jool's journey to married status. He glanced nervously at Aeryn's disgruntled face while it took disturbingly long for his call to go through.  
  
"What?!" A very stressed Chiana barked while high-pitched cries could be heard somewhere behind her.  
  
"Chiana? It's John, we have a slight problem here…"  
  
"And you think I don't have enough dren already filling my hands here?!" She interrupted testily.  
  
"Well, I'm sure you're doing a great…"  
  
"Aw frell!" She cried out as the wails took on a higher note of anguish. "Listen Crichton, unless it's a matter of life and death, you'll have to deal with it yourself!" She abruptly cut her comms before he had time to explain anything.  
  
He put the device back on the table with a light grimace and gazed thoughtfully at the tear on Aeryn's dress as she flipped it this way and that, trying to determine how bad it actually looked. Observing the light fabric, he had a sudden idea and came to kneel in front of her so he could examine the tear himself. "Let me take a look at this," he said, gently prying her hand away. Though the tear had gone upward at first, it had then taken a horizontal angle by her knee, actually tearing rather neatly along one line, like frayed cotton or high-quality silk.  
  
"Don't bother, John," Aeryn sighed dejectedly, her former irritation already fading away, "it can't be sewn back together properly. Besides, you're not a seamstress."  
  
"Hum… sewing IS out of the question," John mused out loud, "but we could try to make this look better. See how it tore here?" He asked her, drawing her attention toward the horizontal slant in the highest part of the tear. "We could finish tearing it all the way round so that it looks more natural. The dress would be shorter of course but, as far as I know, it wouldn't be inappropriate for you to wear it at knee length, I've seen some women with dresses that short in the hallways. It wouldn't even require a sewn hem," he added, a frown of concentration creasing his forehead as he ran the fabric through his fingers, "this fabric seems to tear without loose threads." He looked up at her with renewed confidence. "What do you think?"  
  
Aeryn gave him a long hard look. "What women?"  
  
John's mouth dropped in stunned surprise. Aeryn kept her stern look a microt more and then grinned at him. She just loved his mixed look of surprise and elation whenever she showed a lover's jealousy.  
  
John chuckled goodheartedly and grinned back at her. "Seriously, what do you think?"  
  
Aeryn looked at the tear again and sighed deeply. "I think you know more about fashion than I do," she said without any hurt feelings then gave a small shrug. "Go ahead and try. It can't turn out worse than it already is."  
  
John opened his mouth to contradict her then thought better of it. He shifted into a more comfortable position on the floor and started carefully tearing the fabric along one line, starting behind Aeryn's left knee where the tear had gone horizontal and working his way around her clockwise.  
  
Aeryn stood dutifully in place. She usually disliked physical immobility, it made her feel sloppy. She needed to keep her body on a state of constant alertness, she needed to be constantly reassured that it would be able to respond appropriately to her demands and true immobility made that hard to achieve. The only times she let herself enjoy immobility were when she was under John's attentive ministrations. A light shiver went through her spine as his hands grazed the soft skin behind her knee and she smiled softly. She looked down at his face set in deep concentration with his brows furrowed and the tip of his tongue stuck in a corner of his mouth and let her loving gaze travel down his head, neck and back, lingering on the naked flesh appearing between his short shirt and his low-waisted pants, craning her neck to better follow the line drawn by his spine slightly jutting out on his well muscled back and diving to the beginning swell of…  
  
"Hey!" John's interjection brought her out of her warm reverie. "Don't bend over to take a look, you're messing with the level of the hem doing that," he warned her as he continued his careful tearing, completely unaware of her true line of thought.  
  
Aeryn bit her lip, feeling a light flush grace her cheeks and resolutely looked into the mirror in front of her, somehow thankful that John's backside was no longer visible there. When they had finally started sleeping together, she would have been unable to tell which one of them spent the most time thinking about their lovemaking and craving for it but right now, she suspected she was.  
  
John tossed the now extra piece of fabric aside and finally got up to examine his work. Aeryn looked into the mirror as he walked around her deep in thought. It looked rather fine in the front much to her relief and she started to turn to take a look at the back but John's sudden grip on her arm stopped her.  
  
"Come this way," he urged her with a serious expression on his face, taking her away from the mirror and toward the large window, "I need to see it in a better light."  
  
Aeryn raised a quizzical eyebrow but walked along willingly and came to stand in front of the window. She gave her attention to the tiny pedestrians on the street below, hoping it would distract her from… other distractions while John finished taking care of her… dress.  
  
John cast a furtive glance at the mirror to make sure Aeryn couldn't see her reflection in it anymore and brought his attention back to the main problem. //Damn, damn, damn.// He thought worriedly. //It's much shorter in the back than in the front, I have to trim it further.// He knelt on the floor again and set out to improve on his previous uneven work.  
  
"Is it going to be any longer?" Aeryn asked over her shoulder as she felt his hands tug on the fabric again.  
  
"Uh no, short actually," John stammered. "I mean… short time. And remember, no peeking or it won't turn out good."  
  
Aeryn sighed and obediently followed his advice.  
  
//Well, it's gonna be mid-thigh instead of above knee but that should still be fine.// John tried to reassure himself as he crawled around on his knees, fighting hard to concentrate on his task instead of Aeryn's proximity and the softness of her skin against his fingers. He HAD to concentrate, the fabric wasn't tearing so neatly along one line and he had to make sure he was going along the same one line all the way around. His hand regularly brushed away the few escaping threads that came fluttering against his nose and… and… and…  
  
"ATCHAAA!"  
  
//I'm dead.// John thought with blinding clarity as he blinked out of his unexpected sneeze and realized the irreparable damage. //I. Am. Dead.// The physical shake provoked by the sneeze had resulted in a further tearing up of the fabric, much higher than planned.  
  
"You OK?" Aeryn asked without glancing down, her attention drawn by a scene going on outside.  
  
No, dead, he wanted to say. "Yeah, fine," he managed to utter with a steady voice. "Just feeling a bit cold in those light clothes." He coughed a little to prove his point while frantically attempting to bring the fabric back into one piece. Whether he looked at it from the front or the back, he realized with growing dread that Aeryn was now left with a dress that was no longer than a sexy nightie ending hardly below her buttocks.  
  
"Hmm… John…?" Aeryn asked lazily, unaware of his silent prayers for a miracle.  
  
"Yeah babe…?" He replied with circumspection, trying not to give her reason to look down. His loud sneeze had covered the noise of the tearing and if he could just...  
  
"What are your hands doing so high up my thighs?"  
  
He froze for what seemed an eternity before self-preservation clicked in with a rusty clank, hauling up his only remaining way out. "What would you like them to do?"  
  
Aeryn smiled to herself as her mind flipped through the unending list of possibilities. She bit her lip as she felt his hands slowly slide up, madly quickening her heartbeat and she dropped her gaze to the source of her undivided attention.  
  
"WHAT THE FRELL DID YOU DO?!"  
  
Her outraged yell sent John scrambling back for safety. He felt his tight pants start to rip around his butt as the powerful bulge of his thighs' muscles pushed through the fabric's resistance in his flight for safety. Aeryn took another look at the greatly reduced length of her dress and then lunged toward him in disbelieving anger. Her outstretched hand only grazed his chest as he hastily pulled back to avoid it but grasped his belt so strongly on its way down that his already damaged pants were ripped in two and sent flying overhead. Their sudden release gave John a backward momentum and he stumbled back against the bed. He would have managed to remain on his feet had Aeryn not come charging after him, sending them both sprawling on the bed.  
  
The hard fall knocked the air out of both their lungs. John was the fastest to recover as his forearms had borne the brunt of Aeryn's fall on him and he quickly rolled and pinned her down but Aeryn was stronger and rolled back on top. The air shimmered around them as each struggled for dominance, anger and desire mingling in their stares until their mouths hungrily met midway. Their passionate kiss left Aeryn gasping for air and John took the opportunity to get back on top.  
  
"I'm really sorry about your dress," he apologized sincerely, "I WAS only trying to help…"  
  
Aeryn closed her eyes and breathed deeply, her anger ebbing away under the weight of his body on hers, his naked legs intertwined with hers. She could feel their hearts beat in frantic unison in their chests and slowly stopped struggling against his strong hold on her arms.  
  
John felt her changing mood, the slower rise and fall of her chest though her heart still echoed wildly in his own chest. Her face was flushed and her lips looked tantalizingly full. He disentangled his arms from hers to lovingly caress her hair that had come tumbling down during their struggle, spreading a trail of light kisses on her face along the way. She opened her eyes again and her arms went sliding around his neck, bringing him closer, much closer. "We're gonna be late, you know…" John drawled in her ear.  
  
"We'd better be…" Aeryn warned as she flipped them over once more.  
  
John ran a very appreciative stare on her homemade nightie as she settled herself on his hips and started plucking the buttons off of his shirt, sending them flying one by one all over the room, bits of fabric still clinging to them. Her hands were itching to get his shirt out of the way in one big ripping gesture as they travelled down his chest. John quickly withdrew his hands from her thighs to put a halt to her doings.  
  
"Baby, I hate to say this but could you stop ripping all my clothes off? I AM gonna need something white to wear…"  
  
Aeryn cocked her head at him, silently appraising the situation with his shirt now completely opened on his naked chest save for one button. "All right, Commander," she relented. "I hereby order you to promptly disengage yourself from your Calvins and place them neatly on the chair over there. I want to see regulation folds on those."  
  
"Sir, yes sir," John replied with a widening smile as he eagerly plunged into the role playing she had started. "As soon as you stop squirming over them. Inner pressure is threatening to tear them apart."  
  
Aeryn snorted. "You wish!"  
  
John chuckled and tried to ease himself back into the control of his body but Aeryn thwarted his attempt and settled herself more firmly on his hips. "Let ME help…" She smiled enticingly and brought her hands to the top of her dress. She firmly grasped the soft material and tore it apart, offering him a most generous view of her naked bosom. Her smile turned into a smirk at the sound of his expected garbled groan. She heaved a deep swelling sigh of feigned indifference. "Still want me to stop ripping?"  
  
  
  
TBC 


	2. Part 2

Well, this is an attempt to answer both Aeryncrichton's 'bedroom challenge' and UCSBDad/Shipscat's 'Aeryn in a short white skirt' challenge, posted on the schifi board quite a while ago. I'm a very slow writer… (  
  
It turned out to be just a trifle 'too much' for the scifi board, so I'm posting it here for the sake of the young ones.  
  
Disclaimers: yadda, yadda, yadda. Nobody would want this anyway.  
  
Grateful thanks to Aeryncrichton and Atana_Mirtai for the betareading.  
  
Timeline: so many cycles after Fractures it hurts just to think about it. (  
  
  
  
************  
  
Chiana ambushed them as soon as they turned around the last corner of the corridor leading to the wedding's celebration place. "It's about time! What the frell were you doing?!" She exclaimed with a high-strung voice.  
  
John and Aeryn exchanged a conniving look.  
  
"I commed you a dozen times!" Chiana continued, bouncing nervously on her feet, her eyes constantly darting all over the place. "Don't you have any respect for Jool?! You know what this means to her!" She scolded them while greeting incoming guests with a quick smile and a forceful shove towards the room's entrance. Her gaze finally settled on them for more than a split microt and she did a double take. "What the frell is this?!" She choked in despair, her hand gesturing at their clothes dejectedly. "What happened to the clothes I gave you?!" Her eyes travelled up and down their figures. "These things are appalling! Do they even have a name?"  
  
"Togas," John and Aeryn replied in seemingly rehearsed unison.  
  
"They're togas," John repeated, "kind of human clothes."  
  
"Really?!" Chiana exclaimed dubiously. "Cos' they look a lot more like bedsheets hurriedly wrapped around your bodies!"  
  
Aeryn bit her lip sharply to keep herself from bursting out in laughter. John concentrated hard on Chiana to avoid laughing as well.  
  
"They would… to the untrained eye," he explained with his most serious tone while rearranging the sheet over his shoulder with a grandiose gesture, "yet the art of the roman toga is in the 'draping' of the cloth," he added pedantically with an affected emphasis on the correction, "a most difficult task to achieve."  
  
//And a fun one too.// Aeryn thought in amused recollection.  
  
"Well, it looks like you failed!" Chiana spat, looking them over with boiling irritation.  
  
"We did comm you about it but you were busy at the time," John pointed out.  
  
"I can't be everywhere!" Chiana shouted with uncharacteristic force, her lower lip trembling uncontrollably. She felt a wave of helplessness wash over her and her eyes filled with tears. "It's gonna be a disaster…" she whispered chokingly.  
  
John reached out to her for a comforting hug, fast recovering a serious demeanor. "Hey Chi, of course not. It'll turn out great, you'll see."  
  
Chiana moved away from him with a disbelieving expression, her eyes sadly looking them over once more.  
  
"Don't worry about us," John reassured her, "We'll blend in just fine, no one will notice anything, I promise." He cocked his head at her, touched by her despair and feeling a bit guilty about his previous lack of concern. "Anything we can do to help?"  
  
"The only thing that would help would be to run the ceremony with a knocked- out bride-to-be!" She sniffled, humourless irony weaving its way in before the tears could fall and ruin her face.  
  
John and Aeryn's chuckles brought a sad smile back on her face.  
  
A young Interon girl ran to her side and whispered urgently in her ear.  
  
"I have to go get Jool now," Chiana informed them. "D'Argo kept seats for you." She bounced away shakily, her nervousness giving her usual smooth gait a jerky rhythm. The Interon girl stayed at the door to greet the last arriving guests.  
  
John opened the door and waved Aeryn in before him. A flood of light welcomed them inside the room, whose sidewalls were made entirely of large bay windows. John quickly checked Aeryn's outfit to make sure it wasn't getting too see-through with the almost blinding light. Hopefully, the sheets seemed to have been made of a fabric similar to that of their previous clothes, light but opaque. John allowed himself a sigh of genuine relief after a general inspection of the other peoples' clothes. Theirs did look different in shape and the fabric still seemed a bit rumpled but neither too outstandingly so. They weren't going to create an embarrassment for either Chiana or Jool.  
  
His hand lightly resting on the small of Aeryn's back, he directed her to two empty chairs between D'Argo and a fiery haired elderly Interon woman in the 'white' section of the room and they squeezed close to each other, their thighs touching through their togas.  
  
D'Argo, seated next to a mature Interon woman and looking bored out of his tentacles, gave them a sidelong glance. "What took you so…? Aw… never mind," he sighed dejectedly as he spotted their contented looks and physical closeness. He rolled his eyes up in comic disbelief and shook his head, taking his attention back to whatever unfocused spot he had been looking at before their arrival.  
  
"These are such lovely outfits," the elderly woman, seated next to Aeryn, exclaimed in earnest appreciation. "May I ask you what they're made of?" She inquired, looking at her.  
  
Aeryn immediately looked over at John. They had not gone over that part.  
  
John raised his eyebrows in puzzlement. "Something similar to cotton, I'd say."  
  
"And they're scented too!" The elderly woman exclaimed appreciatively.  
  
John coughed nervously. "Huh… they are?"  
  
"Yes, I can smell…"  
  
"The detergent most probably," he interrupted her quickly.  
  
"No, it's quite different from detergent smell," she contradicted him gently. "It's more like…" she closed her eyes to concentrate better, "… musk and…pherens…" she opened her eyes again and smiled at him, "It's quite an enticing scent, do you know where I could find identical ones?"  
  
Aeryn observed John's profile as he struggled to come up with an explanation that would allow everyone to come out of it unscathed. She could almost see the wheels turning in his head as he used to say and she knew that his good heart would willingly bear the blame if it couldn't be avoided. Responsibility and respect for others kept the John Crichton package tightly tied. She saw the lines softening around his eyes and knew he would then lick his lower lip before speaking.  
  
"Actually..." John stammered, "these are very difficult to come by, they're extremely rare items…"  
  
"Oh…" The woman seemed genuinely disappointed.  
  
John made a light apologetic grimace and started to lean back into his seat. Aeryn felt a sudden and uncontrolled surge of love for him.  
  
"But there are rumors about increasing the production," she blurted out.  
  
John's knee jerked against hers in surprise. He shot her a mixed look of admiration and indignation. Her radiant smile made him want to drop on one knee right here and now and pledge his eternal love to her as their surroundings slowly receded into blissful oblivion, gazes locked on each other's souls and hearts. He leaned over to nuzzle her nose. "I like those rumors," he whispered huskily against her mouth. He felt her lips quiver with a tender smile.  
  
"You make such a lovely couple," the elderly woman said warmly, her head slightly cocked to observe them more closely. "You must be John Crichton and Aeryn Sun."  
  
They straightened up on their chairs and took a closer look at her open face showing what seemed to be genuine tenderness.  
  
"That is correct," John acknowledged with circumspection though. "And you are?"  
  
"Prileshka Fenta Hovalis Teriton, I am Joolushko's grandmother."  
  
John's shoulders sagged slightly and his mouth curved into a fatalistic half-smile. "Of course…" 


End file.
